


A Warning

by TehRaincoat



Series: Bounty Hunted [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Family Drama, Gen, I wish we'd got to see more of how ruthless he was in his youth, beneath all that happy go lucky uncling, how I think Iroh actually is, we get to see it a few times but really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 13:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16833220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TehRaincoat/pseuds/TehRaincoat
Summary: Iroh comes to deliver a friendly warning to his newly redeemed niece.





	A Warning

**Author's Note:**

> This was done for one of last year's prompts for Avatar World Week over on tumblr: "tea time with Iroh" 
> 
> Yes, I do think that Iroh and Azula are a lot more alike than one would lead the audience to believe. I think that the reason he dislikes her so much is that she is the one who reminds him most of himself. And that he cannot abide.

The sun is warm where it hits her skin, a counterpoint to the cool air of early spring. Azula shivers with her eyes closed, face tipped upward and her hands braced against the cool wood of the railing she’s perched herself upon to enjoy the sunshine.

The wound on her throat still throbs. A reminder that she still lives.

“Lady Azula.”

Her eyes open slowly, but it’s an effort not to look as surprised as she is by the sudden voice at her back. She cannot let her uncle know that she hadn’t noticed his approach.

“General Iroh.” Her voice rasps from her throat, stringy and soft.

“I hope you don’t mind if I join you,” he continues, as though she had done more than simply acknowledge that he was in her presence, “it’s such a nice day to feel the sun on your face.”

Azula’s head tips back down, and she looks back at her uncle as servants arrive, bearing a table and a steaming pot of tea. She observes while they set up, expression smooth and unreadable as she mulls over the possible reasons for this particular interruption.

He’s done so well at avoiding her until now.

The former princess turns again to look at the old man, her father’s older brother…Her brother’s surrogate father.

It’s going to be an intimidation, probably. Or else an attempt at reaching out to her now that it is clear she’ll be staying a while. Either one is honestly exhausting to think about.

“If I say no will you go?”

Iroh chuckles, looking jolly, his plump cheeks rosy. It hasn’t taken him all that long to gain back all of the fat he’d lost for the end of the war. It hasn’t taken long for him to grow comfortable in his new life.

Azula wonders what he would do if she were to upend his cozy existence. She knows she’ll never find out while she stays loyal to Zuko.

“Even those of us who prefer to be alone,” he begins, “need company from time to time. Whether we think we want it or not.”

Iroh crosses to the table that the servants have set down, dismissing them with a wave of his hand as he bends to pour the tea they’ve set on a portable heating plate. The embers glow with a low fire, the steam from the spout visible in the shade of the walkway where they have come to this meeting.

Azula waits.

“You…” he walks to her, handing out a steaming cup of tea steadily, the expression he wears around his eyes more akin to a warning than a friendly exchange of words, “are someone who requires constant attention.” He says it so matter-of-factly that Azula almost believes it of herself for a moment.

She lets her gaze linger on the steaming liquid still held out to her, refracting the sunlight from under the awning back into her eyes before she finally reaches for it and accepts the offering. This should be good.

“Believe me, I know,” he continues, going back to the table to retrieve his own cup before he comes to join her at the railing overlooking the pond. He leans against it heavily, his own cup poised under his nose as he takes a happy sniff of the jasmine petals that feature in the brew. “I am the same…or rather I was the same, in all honesty.”

She’s not certain what to make of _that_. Father had always let him be. Iroh had always been one to do what he thought he needed to do, and not what was right for the Fire Nation itself, in her eyes. It is no wonder that all of these years later he’s still never held the throne. He hasn’t the countenance for such a position. Not in the end. Not when he can be so affected by tragedy that it effects his foresight enough to allow Ozai to take the throne out from under him.

Finally Iroh takes a drink from his cup, and Azula feels some tension leave her shoulders. She tips her own cup back against her lips, letting the hot liquid parse them and run soothingly down her throat.

Her uncle turns his attention to her fully, seeming to take consideration of Azula. His honey gold eyes see a lot further into her than she likes. It’s as though he’s peeling back her flesh and viewing what she’s hidden underneath. She wonders if this is how others feel when she looks at them.

“We’re not the same,” she finally says.

Iroh chuckles, taking another sip of his tea, the glass cupped in his hands to warm his palms.

“We are, though,” he tells her easily. “Maybe not so much now…But when I was young? I was just like you. Smart, cunning, manipulative when I had to be. A brilliant tactician. Charismatic…” The list is rather self-congratulatory.

Iroh smoothes a hand through his moustache, wiping away clinging droplets of tea from the corners of his mouth.

“Ruthless,” he adds then, setting his empty cup aside.

Azula’s cup still sits poised in her hand, hanging over the pond and her knee. She lets her eyelashes lower, looking down her nose at her uncle.

“I changed,” he admits, “but I never really _changed_. Sure I learned to embrace the little things in life, to appreciate differences in views and opinions. I learned spirituality and how to keep balance in the world and my life…” he smiles just a little.

Azula purses her lips, taking the last gulp of her tea as she turns her attention back to the way the sun dazzles off of the pond’s surface, leaving light ghosts behind in her eyes every time she blinks.

“But one thing is for certain — I never truly lost my sense of pride.”

There is the barest of twitches at Azula’s brows as they knit subtly together.

“I swallowed it down, and tucked it away to let it fester. I let your father stay in his place on the throne he stole from me. I even let him destroy his own family,” he shrugs as though it is of little consequence. “He did deserve it after all.”

Iroh paces away from her, hands tucked comfortably at the small of his back. Azula watches him, calculating.

“When he cast aside Zuko,” Iroh almost laughs, “I couldn’t believe my luck.”

Azula’s eyes widen nearly imperceptibly.

“That boy always made him so angry because he saw himself in Zuko,” Iroh tells her, “Ozai always struggled with his bending, always using anger and emotion to fuel the fire inside of him instead of intellect. Instead of _skill_.” Iroh turns back to her, his hand folded into a fist as though to emphasize his meaning. “Oh he learned skill, of course, but it was never quite enough to catch up to me, which always chaffed Ozai. How could it not? I didn’t seem to take anything seriously, did I?”

“Perhaps you should tell me your point,” Azula whispers back at him, impatience overriding her curiosity at what he will say next somewhat.

Iroh holds his hand up in the air, motioning for her continued patience. Azula presses her lips into a thin line.

“The day your father cast Zuko aside I finally saw my path forward,” Iroh says then. He fixes her with his gaze, firey, and Azula stares back, cold like the static charge of lightning.

“I love Zuko, of course. That is the main difference between you and me, I am rather certain.” Iroh’s hand slides through the coarse hair of his beard again, his skin rasping on the wiry strands. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I used him for the vengeance that I’d been hoping to exact since the day I came home to find our father dead and Ozai on the throne in my place. The place where I belonged.”

Azula’s heart is racing just slightly, elevated as her uncle speaks. Still, she sits heavily, still waiting for the next revelation with bated breath as though she knows the end of the story but doesn’t want to.

“When your father wounded and banished your brother, I seized my opportunity. I’m rather certain that you have long since guessed that, however. I know you were attempting to bring _me_ back to the Fire Nation all of those years ago, not Zuko. You knew that I would follow wherever he went. He was an investment, to speak your language.”

Uncle is certainly speaking her language. Horror or thrill, she’s not certain exactly which she is feeling.

“Imagine how satisfying it was for me when your brother, the boy that Ozai had deemed worthless, assisted in his downfall, defeated _you_ , the brightest fire bender of the age, and then took the throne for himself.” Another rasping laugh, and Iroh came to a stop only a breath or two away from Azula where she still sat upon the railing, the pond at her back when she turns to face her uncle in his confession.

“Then again, I don’t think you really need to imagine it. You’ve felt the same satisfaction in using your brother as the means to the same end. Only you actually _killed_ Ozai…Honestly it’s almost a more poetically satisfying ending,” Iroh admits. “His favourite child takes his life and he falls to the watery grave he tried to put her into.”

Iroh shrugs, the kindly old man’s façade sliding comfortably back into place as he stands before her, too close for Azula’s individual comfort. She stares at him, waiting for more.

He doesn’t disappoint.

“So that does bring me to my point.”

“Does it indeed?”

“Yes. I want you to know that I am not so foolish as to think that you are done,” he tells her, “or that you are not still sore over your own defeat at Zuko’s hands — “

“Master Katara’s actually,” she interrupts, voice straining, “I defeated Zuzu.”

“Yes, I suppose you did…” His eyes have grown hard, again. “I just wanted you to know that I understand the sort of woman you are. I understand your motivations, unlike my nephew and his friends, and I know that, for now, he is safe under your watch. I also understand that, like me, you are an opportunist. You are able to see all possible outcomes and you prepare for them. I would like you to know that I have also prepared for all possible outcomes, and that those which are favourable to you, but not to Zuko, will be thwarted by me. If they are not, then I can promise you that I will hunt you down to the very ends of this earth, and I will make certain that you pay in kind.”

Iroh reaches forward, plucking a stray hair from her shoulder and flicking it aside. It drifts to the wooden floor of the bridge slowly.

“Do we have an understanding, niece?”

Her eyelids twitch, but Azula doesn’t blink. She stares back at her uncle just as hard as he stares at her, trying not to hold her breath.

Azula takes a slow breath in, moving her hands to fold in her lap almost demurely.

“I think we do, uncle.”

“Excellent.” He takes the porcelain teacup from Azula’s hands and sweeps back toward the table, filling it again with the tea that he’s brought with him and bringing it back to her. “Then I look forward to our long future as friends.”


End file.
